How to get the fxxx out from the d-hole?

What to do when you are feeling depressed or emotional? Here’s a few quick and handy tips for my personal experience to help you to get out from the d-hole, whether it’s self-dug or dug by others. Rather than spending your everyday digging deeper in the d-hole and let yourself de-rail, here’s a list of the things you can try to pull yourself together and pick you up from where your fell and make a new start.

Take a deep breath and try to regulate your breath.

We tend to breathe hectically when we panic and we brain shuts down, and we let our body to take control over our brain. This is when you need to hit the ‘emergency button’ and tell yourself to pause and take a deep breath. Try to regulate your breathe and calm yourself down through deep breathes.

Go for your walk or drive by yourself

No purpose required. Just go for a walk or drive at somewhere Tranquil and to calm your mind. Try to avoid the busy metropolitan street. I personally found it is very helpful when I take a walk out in the nature( ie: along the beach, in the forest, or somewhere with clear big open space). My favourite walks are the ones during the morning when everything is still quiet and during the sunset when the sky is pink, while listening to jazz. Those are my solitude moments and I often return with a much better mood when I note to myself how beautiful life is without all the invisible stress, pressures, forces that we have created for ourselves. Try to put everything aside at that moment, and just simply enjoy your walk/drive and be present.

Listen to something calming or uplifting

Music can always help us to calm down or to elevate our moods. Nowadays with music so easily accessed at our finger tips (via Spotify, soundcloud, etc), it could be handy to have a few playlist saved for mood adjusting purposes. I have a playlist created on my Spotify called ‘feeling blue’, it is something to help me to lifting my mood when I’m feeling down. Jazz, Classics, New Age and pop music often help to pull me out from the d-hole. Try to avoid the emotional songs. Those ones are like poison pills and might get you

Meditation

Meditation apps can be easily accessed via our app stores nowadays for free. All you need to do is to find somewhere quiet, peaceful and a space to be alone, and go through the steps of the meditation apps via your phone. I found those extremely handy and useful to calm me down. All you need to do just to listen and follow it through step by step. Simple and easy.

Pamper yourself

Try to love yourself and treat yourself nice. You need to tell yourself that you totally deserve a nice relaxation treatment after everything (whatever ) you have gone through and often you would walk out a spa feeling refreshed and less depressed. Let the tea tree oils, candles lights, and gentle music that plays in the massage rooms to adjust your mood and make you feel better. Afterall, if we don’t even love ourselves, who is going to love us more?

Do something you like

Whether it’s paining, dancing, sports or cooking, do something that you like to take your mind off from drilling into the things you shouldn’t be focusing. Doing something you like will help you to find yourself back, and overtimes, you will start to enjoy the company of yourself.

Exercise

Exercise is THE QUICK FIX for me. I go for a long run when I’m upset, angry, depressed, stressed or feeling helpless. I chancel my negative energy out through exercise instead of having negative thoughts that might impact our body and mind. I realise that the more negative energy I have, the longer I can run. So at least I’m turning something negative into positive. I often feel good at the end of it, not just because I have channeled my negative energy out, but also exercise helps us to produce endorphin and that elevates our mood.

Talk to Friends and Family

You need to remind yourself that your family and friends will always be there for you when you need them. Don’t be afraid to reach other. By talking to other, you are letting the negativities out instead of having them piled up in your system. Some people like to keep everything to themselves and people often explode when it reaches the last straw. Try to off-load your stresses or anxieties pile by pile by talking to different people. The more you talk about it, the more you vent about it, and the less you will feel about it. After a while, it might feel like that you are telling someone else’s story instead of your own. Don’t keep everything yourself and remember to reach out for help.

Book yourself a trip

Sometimes the best thing to do is to remove yourself from the city, the place and the people that would trigger your painful memory and make you feel worse. Book yourself a beach getaway, desert safari, go explore Europe or go tick off something from your bucket list. Do something meaningful that will make yourself to remember the positive outcome by the end of the trip instead of the negative reasons that got you into this trip in the first place. It takes a least a few days to put together a trip, but at least it gives you something to look forward to instead of you have all space brain capacity focusing on the negative thoughts.

Try to get into a habit of thinking positively.

Scientifically proven, mood swings and our health conditions are positively correlated. A person who lives happily often have a longer longevity than the ones who are lived their live miserably. Afterall, health is our only asset, not money, not houses, not car, if we don’t have a healthy body to enjoy our lives, then nothing really matters after-all. Therefore, we should set a simple daily goal: wake up and think about one happy thing in our lives every day. Don’t wake up and fill your head with negative thoughts like: ‘omg, I have so much I need to do today’, ‘another day, I don’t want to go to work’, ‘what am I getting up for everyday’. Instead of those negative thoughts, we should replace them with ‘can’t wait to catch up with my friends today for a girls’ night’, ‘I can’t wait there are only 3 more days left till my next trip’, ‘What shall I do today to make my family happier’…

Last but not the least, I just want to highlight one thing: Remember, the true happiness comes within. The list of things above that require external focuses or materials can only fix you temporarily (money, shopping, food, etc). The true happiness is a mindset, and that is something you need to work on for the longer term period to train yourself how to get slowly move out from the d-hole when you accidentally falls in, and help yourself to regain happiness. It is a long term training process and requires rigorous training. However, let’s take one step at a time and start with the simple ‘Deep Breath’, when you are in the d-hole next time.